I understand what you mean about the urge to type. I had been much more content these last few weeks not to read all the Christian-bashing, but I knew that soon someone would write God Bless America or Merry Christmas and once again bring the curmudgeons to their feet. I particularly dislike the comparatively unfriendly and argumentative responses to what I consider to be benign, well-meaning, historically and culturally embraced expressions of good will. In fact, the sentiments of Happy Birthday Jesus and Merry Christmas are remarkably Christmas-card bland; the whipped cream of 2000 years of tradition, like the bumper sticker that reads ''Jesus: the Reason for the Season'' that Lester Varner had plastered on the dashboard of his car in his Ernest Does Christmas movie (or whatever the movie was called). If there was a bulldozer on the sidewalk, it was being driven by the bah-humbuggers. You know, Dickens had a good point in A Christmas Carol.

And, as for the sidewalk, I am a little hesitant to say Merry Christmas to my neighbors because of the bah-humbuggery that sometimes ensues, and also as a protest of the commercialization of the holiday. But, on the other hand, I don''t demean, chastise or argue with anyone who dares to say Merry Christmas.

Beyond that, I have to say that I am so wishing I were in Trinidad right now. I have been going through withdrawal for doubles with tamarind sauce at Queen''s Park Savannah and bake-n-shark at Maracas Bay and the sunset over the lazy sailboats in Castara Bay in Tobago. Palm leaves are the tropical equivalent of pines, and white sand that of snow.